This weekend I explored the idea of perceiving the eyes as spherical mirrors.
I find thinking of eyes as mirrors somewhat relaxing. This frees me from the need to grab with the eyes or even to observe. Just feel like the eyes are reflecting whatever comes in. Doesn't matter in which sense and whether the reflection is on the inside or on the outside. Also, I found it very helpful to imagine that the eyes are spherical mirrors, concave or convex or both at the same time, whatever that means, but not flat.
The reason I tried it is because I started to feel that the flat look of the objects is somewhat artificial and transitory. Then I realized that I should really think of spheres. The brain probably does some adjustment for the convexity/concavity so that the image appears flat, or maybe it doesn't do anything and I simply think of the image as flat because of the analogy with TV and computer screens. When I think of spherical seeing, things closer to the center appears larger, and they shrink as they move to the periphery. Besides, this way I am less worried when every object appears to change shape when I simply shift the direction of my eyes. Furthermore, it expands the peripheral vision, since the TV/monitor screen analogy suggests to only cut an inscribed square from the visual field.
How did I come up with the idea of mirrors? I have heard of spherical mirrors (not much, though), so when I think of a spherical glass, spherical mirrors come to my mind. Also, the English "The eyes are the windows to the soul" has an analog in Russian that is translated as "The eyes are the mirrors of the soul".
Eyes can be viewed as reflecting on the outside (cornea) or on the inside of the cornea, or on the outside of the retina - it doesn't really matter, and I am not quite sure I can make the distinction. However, I found it most helpful to think of huge mirrors, taking in up to half of the height of a typical skyscraper. I also found it helpful reminding myself these are curved mirrors, so that the images should be constantly changing as I am moving or as the objects are moving.
Here is approximately what I had in mind:
It also helped me to think of the eyes reflecting the whole 3-dimensional volume. That is, not only does the surface of the eye reflect the surface of the objects, but eye as a 3-dimensional sphere contains little 3-dimensional images of the outside world, such as little people walking inside the eye. Even if I turn away, those little reflections will live in my eye a fraction of a second longer. This image was of limited use, though, since I got overfocused on tracing the reflected objects inside of my eye, and so took my attention away from the environment to my image of what the environment was a second ago.
Sometimes only one eye or neither eye agreed to work as a spherical mirror. In this case I used the usual instructions. I moved the vitreous humor forward and up, back and down, and as usual, it is much easier to move it on the overextended side. By the way, I found it very difficult to not accelerate it on the overextended side as I start thinking about a washing machine. On the contracted side I have to move it slowly, otherwise I cannot access it at all. Then the optic nerve is the second easiest thing for me to sense, after the vitreous humor, even easier than the cornea, so I also practiced seeing through the optic nerve. I tried to pull through the optic nerve on the overextended side to bring it to center, but this doesn't seem to work very well. I guess I only need an intent for center. I don't feel the iris at all so I cannot start seeing through it. On the contracted side I also have some success releasing the retinal membrane.
When I did all these things, it invariably became much easier to engage each and both eyes as spherical mirrors. However, I had to really do these things with internal engagement. The tendency for me is to simply pronounce these instructions, internally, and to imagine the pictures of e.g. the vitreous humor moving, instead of trying to access the actual vitreous humor. For example, when I imagine the optic nerves, I see them at the top of my head or even above, where as when I am trying to access them, I perceive them on the same level as the eyes, and going directly back from each eye. Well, a little laterally on the overextended side.
When I was successful with that, I did have some illusion of stereoscopic vision. I am saying "illusion" because seeing one image with two eyes is, in a sense, always an illusion. I am not quite sure if and when it worked and if it was the way it is supposed to be in other people or if I just imagined everything. However, the impression was that we are taking two magnifying (or just distorting) glasses and then overlapping them in the middle, and the area of different vision is the intersection of two circles or spheres:
I assume that I had some success because of my experience that things inside the red region looked differently from the rest of the vision area. Prior to that it never occurred to me that the region for binocular vision could have such an irregular shape, I just saw two huge spheres overlapping in the center, with the intersection being markedly different from the rest. However, now it seems to make perfect sense.
Ironically, the presence or absence of these effects seems to have no correlation with whether my eyes feel together or look together in the mirror. I think one of the reasons is that when I look into the mirror, I get overfocused on checking the look of the eyes, and switch to some older patterns
I find thinking of eyes as mirrors somewhat relaxing. This frees me from the need to grab with the eyes or even to observe. Just feel like the eyes are reflecting whatever comes in. Doesn't matter in which sense and whether the reflection is on the inside or on the outside. Also, I found it very helpful to imagine that the eyes are spherical mirrors, concave or convex or both at the same time, whatever that means, but not flat.
The reason I tried it is because I started to feel that the flat look of the objects is somewhat artificial and transitory. Then I realized that I should really think of spheres. The brain probably does some adjustment for the convexity/concavity so that the image appears flat, or maybe it doesn't do anything and I simply think of the image as flat because of the analogy with TV and computer screens. When I think of spherical seeing, things closer to the center appears larger, and they shrink as they move to the periphery. Besides, this way I am less worried when every object appears to change shape when I simply shift the direction of my eyes. Furthermore, it expands the peripheral vision, since the TV/monitor screen analogy suggests to only cut an inscribed square from the visual field.
How did I come up with the idea of mirrors? I have heard of spherical mirrors (not much, though), so when I think of a spherical glass, spherical mirrors come to my mind. Also, the English "The eyes are the windows to the soul" has an analog in Russian that is translated as "The eyes are the mirrors of the soul".
Eyes can be viewed as reflecting on the outside (cornea) or on the inside of the cornea, or on the outside of the retina - it doesn't really matter, and I am not quite sure I can make the distinction. However, I found it most helpful to think of huge mirrors, taking in up to half of the height of a typical skyscraper. I also found it helpful reminding myself these are curved mirrors, so that the images should be constantly changing as I am moving or as the objects are moving.
Here is approximately what I had in mind:
It also helped me to think of the eyes reflecting the whole 3-dimensional volume. That is, not only does the surface of the eye reflect the surface of the objects, but eye as a 3-dimensional sphere contains little 3-dimensional images of the outside world, such as little people walking inside the eye. Even if I turn away, those little reflections will live in my eye a fraction of a second longer. This image was of limited use, though, since I got overfocused on tracing the reflected objects inside of my eye, and so took my attention away from the environment to my image of what the environment was a second ago.
Sometimes only one eye or neither eye agreed to work as a spherical mirror. In this case I used the usual instructions. I moved the vitreous humor forward and up, back and down, and as usual, it is much easier to move it on the overextended side. By the way, I found it very difficult to not accelerate it on the overextended side as I start thinking about a washing machine. On the contracted side I have to move it slowly, otherwise I cannot access it at all. Then the optic nerve is the second easiest thing for me to sense, after the vitreous humor, even easier than the cornea, so I also practiced seeing through the optic nerve. I tried to pull through the optic nerve on the overextended side to bring it to center, but this doesn't seem to work very well. I guess I only need an intent for center. I don't feel the iris at all so I cannot start seeing through it. On the contracted side I also have some success releasing the retinal membrane.
When I did all these things, it invariably became much easier to engage each and both eyes as spherical mirrors. However, I had to really do these things with internal engagement. The tendency for me is to simply pronounce these instructions, internally, and to imagine the pictures of e.g. the vitreous humor moving, instead of trying to access the actual vitreous humor. For example, when I imagine the optic nerves, I see them at the top of my head or even above, where as when I am trying to access them, I perceive them on the same level as the eyes, and going directly back from each eye. Well, a little laterally on the overextended side.
When I was successful with that, I did have some illusion of stereoscopic vision. I am saying "illusion" because seeing one image with two eyes is, in a sense, always an illusion. I am not quite sure if and when it worked and if it was the way it is supposed to be in other people or if I just imagined everything. However, the impression was that we are taking two magnifying (or just distorting) glasses and then overlapping them in the middle, and the area of different vision is the intersection of two circles or spheres:
I assume that I had some success because of my experience that things inside the red region looked differently from the rest of the vision area. Prior to that it never occurred to me that the region for binocular vision could have such an irregular shape, I just saw two huge spheres overlapping in the center, with the intersection being markedly different from the rest. However, now it seems to make perfect sense.
Ironically, the presence or absence of these effects seems to have no correlation with whether my eyes feel together or look together in the mirror. I think one of the reasons is that when I look into the mirror, I get overfocused on checking the look of the eyes, and switch to some older patterns
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